MUV in Barcelona

MUV – Mobility Urban Values – levers behavioural change in local communities using an innovative approach to improve urban mobility: changing citizens’ habits through a game that mixes digital and physical experiences

Problem

The Sant Andreu neighborhood has been receiving more attention and that emerging attraction is increasingly compelling other district’s dwellers to set up shops and work there, thus bringing up demand for transportation.

Description

Rather than focus on infrastructures, it raises citizen awareness on the quality of the urban environment where they live in order to promote a shift towards more sustainable and healthy mobility choices.

The MUV system will result from the combination of behavioural change techniques, new technologies, data science and co-design approaches. The solution will include a mobile app tracking users’ daily routes and assigning points for sustainable behaviours and a network of sensing stations designed by the makers’ community.

Mobility and environmental data gathered via the mobile app and the monitoring stations, all released as Open Data, will allow policymakers to enhance planning processes and civic hackers to build new services able to improve cities’ quality of life in a more effective way.

Results

The strategies put in place have been focused on the empowerment of the citizens, let them feel an active part of the project in order to really promote a change, adopt healthy mobility habits for themselves and the environment, being able to advocate for a real social impact in their own city. Barcelona’s case has proven how the level of engagement has been crucial to establish a trustworthy relationship with the institutions, the MUV users – the athletes and the Local Supporting Organizations in order to involve the main actors.

Lessons Learned

The lessons learnt from the project implementation, in all pilots, not only Barcelona, were retrieved from the process evaluation document.

The main drivers for success of MUV was:

• Exploitation of events co-creation sessions and workshops
• Take advantage of network created through early sessions
• Promotion material (e.g. communication, social networks)
• Alignment of objectives between sktakeholders
• Keep the players’ community alive. Involve them in the process of enhancing the game experience with new activities and challenges
• Continuous spread of the MUV project as an innovative way to influence people’s mobility choices.

The main barriers were the following:

• Participation fatigue
• Cultural bias
• Lack of trust in new public initiatives
• Drop out rate after first use or first download (Chun Rate)
• Difficulty in involving mobility managers of institutions